Simpson’s Sept. 16 arrest in a strange case involving a dispute over sports memorabilia was the top story last week, filling 13% of the newshole according to PEJ’s News Coverage Index for Sept. 16-21. But there were huge discrepancies among media sectors that left no doubt this is very much a TV-driven event.

Simpson was only the tenth-biggest newspaper story last week, generating just 2% of the front-page coverage in print. And the case was only the fifth-leading story on radio, at 4% of the airtime. But his arrest was a mega-even on cable, where it filled a remarkable 33% of the airtime last week as the leading story. It was also the most covered subject on network TV (15%), and here there was a dramatic split by day part. While the case accounted for 7% of the coverage on the nightly newscasts, it filled 31% of the airtime on the more celebrity-oriented morning news shows.

Thus, at least for the first week of coverage, the Simpson case followed a pattern set in another celebrity scandal tale, the death of Anna Nicole Smith. Both stories were fueled by intense attention on cable news and broadcast network morning shows.

Simpson’s newest brush with the law was not the only big event last week to bring back old memories. ABC anchor Charles Gibson began his Sept. 17 newscast by declaring, “You’ll be forgiven if you think for a moment tonight that you’re in a time warp because we’re reporting on Hillary Clinton’s health care plan and criminal charges against O.J. Simpson. Sound familiar?”

Much of the coverage of the 2008 presidential race, the third-biggest story last week at 9%, was devoted to Democratic frontrunner Clinton’s newly unveiled health care plan. That initiative generated inevitable comparisons to her ill-fated 1993 effort to develop a national health care policy as First Lady. Another top-five story last week—the Sept. 20 demonstration in Jena, Louisiana protesting the prosecution of six black teens in connection with the beating of a white student—also created a sense of déjà vu, with some observers recalling the civil rights protests of the 60’s.

“The Rev. Jesse Jackson likened the gathering protest to historic events in Montgomery and Selma, Ala., and Little Rock, Ark,” reported a June 20 Associated Press story about Jena. The Jena protests became the fifth-biggest story last week, at 5% of the newshole.

The two other top-five stories last week involved Iraq. Dominated by coverage of a lethal shooting incident involving private contractor Blackwater, the situation inside Iraq was the second biggest story, at 10%. The Iraq policy debate, which dominated Sept. 9-14 news coverage (at 36%) thanks to the so-called “Petraeus Report,” dropped off dramatically last week. It finished as the fourth-biggest story, filling only 5% of the newshole.